[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: All right. Yeah, we can get started. I'll start with roll call. It's been a while, so remind me if I miss anything. But we'll start with roll, and if people trickle in, we'll make sure they're added to our list. But just one by one, we'll go down the line. Lois. Benji.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Here.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Barry. Here. I do not see Loretta. Kathleen?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Here.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Luke?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Present.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Hi. Martha, I do not see in our list here. Dan, also not. Bob?
[Robert Paine]: Present.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Jessica? Not seeing. John? Not in my list. Will is here. And Paul? Here. Fantastic. All right. Did everyone have a chance to review our minutes from last month?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yes, and I do have two minor corrections, if I may. Great. In the Zero Waste Medford from Provisa, the third bullet down, last sentence, I would just like to clarify, she doesn't want compostable bags, I believe it was, to be the new single-use plastics, but compostables is okay. I also wanted to edit the Eighth bullet down, Luke said ordinances that require usability and recyclability are useful. I think I'd like to have that more appropriately state can be effective, are useful is very vague and probably not correct.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Noted. All right. Anything else? Oh, Barry.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I notified Teresa, but I didn't hear back. So just to make sure, towards the very end of the minutes, there is a reference to a person that doesn't exist. The name is Matt Barlow, not Arlo. So.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: to fix that. Good to know. I'll make sure, yep, I got my notes here. Matt Barlow, good to know. All right, anything else? Seeing none, let's
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I can make a move to a motion to accept the minutes as edited.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I second that.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Excellent. Let's go down the line quickly. Lois? Yes. Benji?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I missed that meeting. Barry? Yes.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Kathleen?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yes.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Luke? Yes. Bob? Yes. John? Oh, no, sorry. Will, I will abstain, I was not present. Paul? Yes. Perfect and I think we had 1 new member just join. Or a guest guest, so with 6 votes, the eyes have it. We accept the minutes and we can move on. Find a little bit of note taking. Maybe Alicia will be able to assist. We have 3. Choices that had come up for our next meeting date. I believe the 1st, Monday of November is, I believe, Veterans Day. So we will not be having a session on that day, but instead we have November 6th, 12th, and 13th. I don't know if we had the exact numbers on who voted for each, but that is in our list here as the 3 viable dates.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I would just note that those dates are November 6th is a Wednesday.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, a Wednesday, a Tuesday and a Wednesday.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, 7th and 13th are Tuesday and Wednesday.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes. So a little bit different, same time, different day.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I would be okay with the 6th or 13th myself.
[Barry Ingber]: I don't want to meet the day after election day. I mean, that doesn't mean that you can't, but I don't want to.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I would agree with that.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah. So perhaps the 13th.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: All right, any opposed to. Next session being Wednesday, the 13th. All right, I'll just make sure that's noted November 13th. I'll see you all there. Great. Now, we can get into the nitty gritty. I'm going to throw it over to our administrative staff. I believe we have some updates.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, sorry. I was clicking around at calendars and notes, and I couldn't find the Zoom window. Modern day problems. I assume you mean me. Dennis does not have updates for you, but I have a bunch of updates that Brenda left to share with you. And I also, in one of these many windows, had the agenda open for this meeting. Are you looking for, no, the notes she gave me were monthly updates on initiatives, so that's later. The in terms of administrative updates.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, I have administrative and then into harvester energy.
[Alicia Hunt]: Often we have administrative updates and I'm trying to think if we have any good ones for you, I. I'm thinking about the timing of your last meeting. Jackie for Sina, who has just joined us on the call this evening. She's actually the new head clerk in our office and so she was an intern with us for 14 or 15 months. And then she was hired to into the clerk position. And I think that may have actually happened since your last meeting or her first day was since your last meeting. So welcome, Jackie.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, I don't remember last meeting, so maybe people remember me. Definitely.
[Barry Ingber]: So can you clarify, is that head clerk for City Hall or head clerk for Planning and Development?
[Alicia Hunt]: It's our office. So it's the clerk position in our office, but the title is head clerk. Frankly, I need an office manager, and I think of it as an office manager, but that's a different level in the system. and they would only approve the head clerk level and not the office manager level. So yeah, she's the head of herself. She kind of manages the intern stuff and she's the office manager. I think that's actually a great way to think of it. She does a lot of all the finances and all the phone desk answering, and she's responsible to make sure the phone gets answered. So she's not there. One other, in case any of you tend to visit City Hall, the elevator has been out for quite a while undergoing major repairs. It works again effective today. It beeps now, it's interesting. So hopefully this will be way more reliable, but if anybody is reliant on an elevator to visit our office, you can now get there.
[Robert Paine]: Lisa, this is Bob. What's this RFP about redeveloping city-owned parcels?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm happy to talk about that now or later.
[Robert Paine]: Maybe later if that's okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Less administrative, more policy. I'll put it on the list for the policy updates. All right, so I'll mute, and I think Jackie, are you ready? You can sit, but Jackie is prepared to talk more about Harvester Energy Festival.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, just so you have coming up on the 19th. I know some of you are going to be volunteering and I can send a volunteer sign up sheet if any of you are interested in volunteering for the event and, you know, manning your table or just doing general setup and breakdown. And I can answer any questions about, you know, details for the day of. I'm going to send out emails in the next week or two just about, you know, details about when to come, what the sign-in process is going to look like and everything like that. But I'm happy to answer any questions.
[Alicia Hunt]: And traditionally, I think most of you all, I was looking to see who's on here, knows this, nobody's that new, but this committee has co-hosted this event. And I think in recent years, it's been more and more the staff running it and less and less this committee, but we really would love to have all of your help for various jobs. If any of you have favorite jobs that you like to do, you should make sure that Jackie knows that as we're setting things up. For example, John Rogers directs traffic and helps with that. Jackie's done a number of updates this year, including ordering signage that's made that says things like parking and arrows. You want to tell them about the signs?
[SPEAKER_07]: Sure, yeah. Just for you to bear that. better directions or like last year we had so if you were at the event last year, we had. go, it was called green team and they basically do electronics recycling, things like that. And we had a paper shredding service as well. And we had them in that parking lot right next to community garden. And it obviously causes like a traffic backup. But unfortunately, that's just the best spot for it. But we really wanted to make sure that we have handicapped parking access. So we're going to kind of be really sure this year that we almost have like some parking volunteers that are directing, okay, this is for recycling, this is for the paper shredding, and this is handicap parking. This direction, you know, going to the Hormel Stadium and the front parking lot of the school is gonna be just like general festival parking because those people can walk, but we really wanna prioritize that the handicap parking is available. Yeah, so this year there's gonna be some, yard signs that are just making that clear on the way in, as well as we want to have some volunteers that are, you know, if people roll down their window and are stopping and are confused, that's making that clear. Because I think some people just were thinking, oh, there isn't even any handicap parking, it's all blocked. So that's one of the things. And then, because of that, we also wanted to be sure that if we're having some, like basically three access points to the festival, like coming from that front, that parking lot, we're going to have the the electronics recycling and the paper shredding coming from the Hormel Stadium parking lot and coming from that little parking lot in the front of the Midland School. We wanna make sure that everybody knows which way to walk to the festival. So there's just some like walking direction signage and some larger posters. So those are all some things that we have this year just to try and help it run a little more smoothly. And also some signs for within the festival, just pointing people to the food and the beer garden because It's such a giant expanse at this point. That's like, I want to make sure people know what's going on. And there's, um, Brenda also organized like an EV showcase with some of the cars that we're going to put right near the electronics recycling in the grass. So that'll be cool. So lots of cool stuff. I want to make sure everybody can access it.
[Kathleen McKenna]: It's like a great idea. Like the signage.
[Lois Grossman]: Jackie. Yes, I volunteered for setup. Okay. So, where should I expect to park.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's a good. I think that we were thinking, Alicia you can like add on to me with this but. Are we thinking that those people will probably park in the general parking?
[Alicia Hunt]: Because I know... So we would rather that you park further away and then walk in. Because if you park in the lot, so we're going to close the lot right next to the festival very early. Possibly even the night before so it doesn't fill up with parking parked cars that we then have to move, because there will be things other things going on in that area that day I tried to get baseball and soccer canceled but I was told no go on that. So there will be other activities, but we need the lot available for the recycling process and to pull the cars in off the road for that. So you need to park sort of out front. And frankly, if you parked up close, and then we would tell you before the festival starts to go get your car and move it and put it back out front.
[Lois Grossman]: Well, I was going to park in front of the school. That's good. Right. That's fine. Yeah. off of Salem or whatever that is. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: You can park in front of Andrews or McGlynn. We actually expect parking in front of Andrews to get filled up because they're going to have soccer over there and baseball at some point. It's nicer if you can park in front of McGlynn, frankly, because that's leaving those spots over there for the kids who are playing over there.
[SPEAKER_07]: I see. In front of our base parking lot.
[Alicia Hunt]: I was going to mention there are a bunch of jobs that we often so we'll have we'll need people to help staff check in tables. We need help with setup and breakdown and. we may need help with like directions and stuff. I was trying to think what other jobs, we're not doing the green awards, so we won't have anything around that. And we're not doing a raffle, so we won't help with that. So that'll really simplify a lot of the volunteering. And we will have student volunteers, but we really, my experience has been that we need adults with the students. So what might happen is that we might ask you to be responsible for a check-in table, and give you like four or five students who would also be there that would rotate through, and you might need to just check in and check on them. But there needs to be like an adult who is thinking about that and them during the course of the... And I see there are a bunch of questions, so I'll shut up and let people ask questions.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think Jill Feldman has had their hand up for a while.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes. Oh, just you're muted. I think you're muted.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: I'm with Mothers Out Front, and this will be the third year that we've participated. And I just want you to know that it's an invaluable tool for us to promote climate messages, and also for us to recruit new members. were there three years ago, we've started a chapter in Medford. And so I don't know if you just wonder sometimes like, you know, whether things have an impact, definitely. This is a really good festival.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's awesome. We appreciate hearing that because the staff work really hard.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, no, that is great to hear. Fantastic, I see Kathleen as well.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yeah, I just want to ask, what about the folks that are tabling? Where do they park?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think that'll be the same as, you know, that sort of like the front parking lot of McGlynn or the Horn Mill. One, just because we want to keep that rear parking lot, which is next to the community garden open for the recycling and for handicap parking. Okay. Unless there is a handicap parking need. I mean, you could park there and move your car, which they've had people do in the past. Right, Alicia, is that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. If you park there to unload, we help you unload. That's the other thing that we do need a lot of setup help because it's great to help somebody unload quickly enough that they can then go move their car out of the way of the recycling setup.
[SPEAKER_07]: I also think that a lot of our student volunteers aren't coming until the festival technically starts at 12, which is when they were available. So it definitely would be really, really helpful if more of you guys could volunteer for that setup period. The student volunteers probably had difficulty anyways helping move things around. A lot of them are just middle schoolers. I'm thinking that maybe we'll even have some of the interns with some of them and we're going to have them, we're going to get them some sidewalk chalk and have them draw some directions on the sidewalks and keep things like that too, so. So when do you need us? So we're sure we're kind of doing it in shifts this year. Um, so I did sort of like a 10 to 12, um, 12 to two 30 and a two 30 to four. And you can do multiple shifts, but for the setup, like if you guys were there around 10 AM between 10 and 12, that would be really, really helpful.
[Alicia Hunt]: Usually we set up the tables at 10 and we ask the exhibitors to come at 11. So there's sort of like a wave of like, there's nothing to do. The tables are here. Now there's a lot to do. And then it settles down again. And then the exhibitors start showing up and then there's a lot to do. And then the event starts. And so there's less to do. And then people are tired and they need backup at the check-in tables and stuff because they need to rotate through. So it kind of comes and goes in waves.
[SPEAKER_07]: We're going to have three check-in tables. We think I'm going to do some layout stuff in the next couple of days, but we wanted to cover that back, that area like the school and then the wind turbine and the bathrooms, that walkway coming from the Hormel parking to try and intercept some people that might be coming on from there or from like the park, because it's just a big festival. And I feel like we're going to have two bands, we're going to have beer garden, food, ice cream, obviously everything else we talked about. So we've got like 60 tables for this year's festival. So pretty big.
[Alicia Hunt]: So for those of you who are curious who remember, we'll continue to have tables along the walkway along the school, but that instead of lining the walkway to the wind turbine, the tables will come in down in front of the school and then into the playground and through the playground and there'll be a lot of tables through there. and then out the other side of the playground, which is where you will then see the electric cars staged and the beer garden. The beer garden needs to be like on the other side of the playground. And then that would be the way over to the wind turbine. to like do wind turbine tours. And then there's a new stage. And so the music will be up on the stage. And there's a turf field in front of the stage. And that's where we're planning to put the knuckle bones from the Medford Family Network, the kids activities. The layout will work a little differently and the flow will be different. One of the things that I'd love to get feedback on after the fact is, does this work? Should we have done it differently? Once you're there, if you haven't seen it, there are these new rain gardens that are awesome, but they're really in the way of where we used to do the festival and that path isn't still there the same way. It's hard to do it. over there. And if we had tables along the path between the school and the wind turbine, they'd be down low, behind and beneath the stage. So you would really feel like the festival had turned your back on you if you're in that group of tables. So that's why we're sort of looking at this different arrangement. And I'm thinking about having the Green Energy Consumer Alliance closest to the door with the bathrooms, because that will be the most direct route to the wind turbine. So people could gather there kind of behind the stage to go for a wind turbine tour, and then they could walk up that path. So if you, there's a ribbon cutting for the Micklin Playground tomorrow afternoon. You're welcome to come to that and you're welcome to go by at any time to sort of see what we're talking about. Tomorrow at 3.30. Kathleen has her hand up.
[Kathleen McKenna]: No, I don't. All right, thank you.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I just wanted to ask one question. Do we know if there is a football game that might be taking up some of the McGlynn Middle School? Definitely no.
[Alicia Hunt]: They kept things out of Hormel Stadium for us.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That's great. Okay. We could use the Hormel parking lot as well.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. If you feel like you can, parking at Hormel is good because you know that visitors want to park closer. They decide it's too far and they're not staying.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That's great. And then the other thing is my daughter has some testing that day and I will be occupied in the morning. I will not be able to come until probably around noon. So apologies, I won't be there for the setup.
[Alicia Hunt]: And Jackie's gonna circulate the link to the signup. I think you didn't actually make a form this time, right? You just asked people to add their names to the spreadsheet.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I mean, I can make a form, but Brenda had just sent that off and it seemed to work okay for people, but yeah, okay, I'll just send along what we had had.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm there all day, so use me as you wish.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great, thank you. And it's a great networking event. We actually think that we're going to have a much better turnout from Tufts students than ever before for two reasons. One is that Jackie has used a lot of her connections at Tufts and advertised it as a networking event. That excites students. And then the other is, Jackie, tell them about the shuttle.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes. So this year, so last year, Loretta had kind of last minute, um, organized a free shuttle with Magan transport, which was such a great idea, but it kind of came together. So last minute and people didn't really know about it. And so this year we're still going to do a last leg of outreach because I'm just finalizing sort of a little schedule I made up with, um, Um, I was going to talk to him. He's like the transport owner, but basically the, it's going to be a free shuttle loop around Medford. to and from the festival. It's like about a 45-minute run. That's like adding traffic, so it could be less. But it's going to stop at, it's going to start in South Medford, like across from the Tufts Pool at the intersection of Main Street and Medford Street. Then it's going to go to the Tufts Community Center, and then the West Medford Community Center, and then the Senior Center in Medford Square, and then to the festival. So that's kind of new, but we just really wanted to make it more accessible and it's also a sustainable way to get there. So that's that's happening and then there's going to be one run. earlier in the morning directly from Tufts to the festival so we can get some more student exhibitors there. And we have more clubs coming this year and we've tried to get, just in trying to encourage the students to come because it's just such a great community event. So that's the new thing. And stay tuned for the shuttle schedule details. I'm working on it. And I'm going to send a link for this volunteering sign up.
[Lois Grossman]: I saw the ad, by the way, in the Tufts environmental bulletin that comes out. I saw that today and it mentioned the shuttle.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's awesome. Yeah, I've had some of the interns send that stuff out, which is great. I just sent in the chat a link to our spreadsheet. If it didn't, for some reason, show up on the right tab, which it should have, but it might not, if you go to the bottom, it'll have the tabs and it should say 2024 volunteering. And if not, let me know. And we're just sort of having you guys sign up on 2024 volunteering underneath the staff section.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I also see Bob.
[Robert Paine]: Yes, I hope I don't jinx the event, but the long range forecast is currently favorable. with sun and cloud mix, and mid-60s is the temperature, so we'll see. I have to apologize that I have a wedding event that day, so I will not be able to attend, but I think the Green Energy Consumers Alliance person has been there so many years, they know how to do wind turbine tours.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. Bob, will this be actually the first festival you're ever missing?
[Robert Paine]: That's correct. Wow. It's a fluke event. Fluke wedding event. I don't know why they're doing this wedding in October, but they are.
[Alicia Hunt]: Probably because it's cheaper. That's why I got married in November.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, that's right.
[Alicia Hunt]: OK. Are there any other questions? I'm trying to think if there's anything else that you all don't even know to ask about. But there will be the electronics recycling, shredding, and textile donations again. So the textile donations and shredding, we're arranging for, and so sometimes our volunteers help with that. The electronics recycling is being run by a professional company. And so we may be helping direct traffic, but I really don't expect us to be needed as part of that. Like they're really going to be hands on. You'll remember there have been years where we had to manage that. We do not have to manage it. It's one of the things I like. And hopefully you all got a flyer in your mailbox from National Grid that said electronics recycling at the Harvester Energy Festival. That was huge last year and they did it again this year.
[SPEAKER_07]: I did want to mention also about the shredding just because I just talked to the company that we're having this year just to get some details. I'm going to put it on the website tomorrow, but just for any restrictions because the mailer did go out and I've gotten a few calls about it. Staples are fine, little paper clips are fine, even those little binder clips are fine. It's just no hard binding, no three-ring binding. and nothing that isn't paper. That's the rules on that. Then I was going to talk about this with Alicia, but there's no restrictions really for the amount, but we could maybe set a limit for how many bankers boxes we're allowing per person. But it's an on-site shredder, so they're bringing their on-site shredding truck. They don't just take it away, it gets shredded on-site.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, we usually have sort of said things like limit to three boxes a person, and that's mostly to avoid somebody showing up with like an office sort of stuff. In my experience, if the shredding truck fills up, then we're done. And that only happens if you have like a really steady stream the whole time. We've never had that happen. But if somebody shows up and is like dominating it, that's not fair. That's why we might say three or five boxes, something like that is fine. Max, because that allows us to look at the person who has 15 boxes or a whole truckload and say to them, you can wait till the end. Once all the regular people have done their shredding, if there's still space, you may shred, but you can't dominate and then we have 10 residents waiting their turns because of that. Hopefully makes sense. Kathleen.
[Kathleen McKenna]: You're muted. You answered part of my question on the electric bill. Yeah. Is there anything on the website? I'm trying to look at that with the pricing for the electronics.
[SPEAKER_07]: I should. There should be.
[Robert Paine]: The flyer had prices.
[SPEAKER_07]: It was on the card, but you know, I actually just got a list from the guy running it and I'm going to put it on tomorrow. I was going to have one of the interns do it. But yes, there will be tomorrow.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you. I know that there's like a rebate on dehumidifiers, so that's good.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: All right, any parting thoughts? If not, I'm going to throw it back to Alicia. Oh, yeah, Jackie, sorry.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, no, I was just going to follow up.
[SPEAKER_08]: Sorry about that. I had to get something for one second for them.
[Alicia Hunt]: All right, so we're going to move on to the policy updates the information that Brenda sent me. So I have a ton of different things. But why don't I start with the things off the top of my head because Bob was asking about the RFP, and I thought it was good to mention the ribbon cutting for our pop up park, and sort of like what all is going on with that. So we have been talking for many, many, many, many, many years about Medford Square. There have been many, many studies about Medford Square and what to do in the square and with the square and all of these parking lots and what we. have been we also last year had MAPC come do like an up refresh of like what is what are the interests what are the priorities of the city we what do we want to see um and so the answer really was housing Realistically affordable housing and then for deed restricted affordable housing ground floor commercial to keep the ground floors activated and active and some sort of innovative approach to parking. How do we handle parking in the square? how do we make it better for the community? In order to do that, we've put out an RFP. We came to find a good developer to work with. We came to the decision, there was a lot of questions about selling the parcels versus leasing the parcels, and how do you do that so that it's cost-effective for developers so that they want to do it? And the answer to that, we've been told by all of our consultants, is a ninety nine year lease. So we retain ownership. We don't sell them, but we give them enough a long enough runway with the property so that it's cost effective. They can finance it and they can basically for I've been told that from the perspective of people who are financing it, ninety nine years is the same as selling it to them. We worked with Mass Development, which is a quasi-state agency, and they helped pay for a consultant who is helping to write the RFP, well, helped to write it, and is guiding us and advising us through the process. The RFP went out and the RFP both asks for price, like what would you pay for us annually? What community benefits will you provide? The selection process, we do not have to take the highest price. We will rank them and we can do a combination of community benefits versus dollars for the city because more affordable housing is a community benefit and public parking is a community benefit. We've suggested the city would like to see a supermarket in there. We would like to see more community space. Um, so all of those are things that we will then rank and rate and rank, um, for the. For the to choose a developer, and then we will negotiate with a developer. Sorry that I said the cat was jumping on my lap and that was very disconcerting. And so there was some like, so we've also in the corner of one of the lots we've set we're setting up a pop up park, which is the idea is this is like a temporary location, that's going to be a fun location with paint and furniture that can be moved from place to place so it's not permanent in that location. And that allows us to then hold meetings and events there in that space and to hear from people like in the space and for people to imagine it. Because part of what we would like to see is better, you know, more use of the water, water facing activity activation. And included is the option that all the parking behind the building that runs along the river could be part of this for a developer that has innovative ideas and integration and has an idea of how they would use all of this together. So that's an interesting twist to it. And as I was thinking, I feel like there was one other thing in all of that. But yeah, so the bids are due December 20th. And then we'll interview firms in January and hopefully have a selected proposal. And well, we'll have a selected firm in February, and then we'll work through. Oh, the other thing that we asked for is that we'd really like to, like there are bonus points for, providing some campus-like feel between the senior center and city hall to make things more walkable, and that we did say that the city is open to realignment of the roads in that whole area if there's a proposal where that makes sense to do. We were looking for something that's really best for Medford Square and we said, let's think outside the box on it. So the pop-up park is going to be on Thursday, I think, is the ribbon cutting for that, or Wednesday? Sorry, I'm going to check my calendar. The pop-up park is Wednesday at four. And actually, we're going to have, Colleen's is going to sell ice cream. It's going to be a little bit of an event. And Matt Heaton is going to play. He called and volunteered to play at this event. So that'll be nice. It's also the date that the car park bids are due. So that'll be really interesting. Definitely ask me how that went, if you see me at the pop-up. Okay. So then Brenda's updates. Electrify Medford, 84 people have signed up so far and 19 have been coached. They've had a bunch of, I could go through all the events that they've been at. She left little details on all of them, but I could speak for an hour here. The EV Showcase, the Canoemobile event, and the Mystic River Celebration, they were at all of those. then they're going to be at the Farmer's Market this week or next week, the Harvest Art Festival and the Pumpkin Smash, and there's going to be a winter preparedness event November 14th at the library. So they'll be at those events. composting. We have about 4,500 people signed up. We're continuing to do outreach. They were just doing a little pilot where they had the city robocall about 100 houses and say, your new compost bin is going to get dropped off. If you want to use it, you can just use it. And if you don't want to use it, you can leave it Where it is or put it back out and in it garbage to guard or call garbage to garden if you want it to go away right away and they'll take it away. And each of the compost bins that gets left would have a package with it that says, you know, this is your new bin. This is part of the city's program. Sorry, we missed you. And so they're going to go around. I think they were actually going to do this this past week. You see, I had an update in my email. Are they're doing it this week. My apologies in that this includes okay so 400 and 4550 people total includes the hundred or 30 pilot folks. So they dropped off 130 bins with the idea of to see what the up reach so the idea is that they were going to knock on the door. And if the people are there they would talk to them and if they're not there they were just going to leave the band with this information, but the city Robo called first. What they had found is when they go around knocking on doors, 90% of the people they talk to take a compost bin and start. So this is to sort of get past the fact that like 70% of people weren't actually opening the doors. So we'll see how that, we'll have an update for that next month. I'll get an update next week. EV charging revolving fund. That sounds like Brenda told you all about this.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Can I ask a quick question about the topic? Yeah. The bags. When we did it, I remember it was somewhat cumbersome to try and figure out where to get them. We used Garbage to Gardens directly, and we got it from them. When the city took over, they weren't providing the bags, and so it was a little bit cumbersome to get there. I was just wondering, what others experience has been and where that stands.
[Alicia Hunt]: You can order bags directly from Garbage to Garden and they'll just leave it with your bin and it's $8 for 20 bags, which is 20 weeks worth because that's the liner. They can also drop off for you the kitchen countertop bags if you want. You can buy compostable, so if you buy your own bags, you just have to make sure they have the right certifications. And in Medford Trove Green possessions, they sell compost bags specifically to Medford specifications. So that's the very best reliable place to get them rather than figuring it out yourself. Anyone else want to add to that if there are other
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: You know, I'll just say I've been buying my bags directly through Garbage to Gardens and that's been, it just requires paying attention when you come close to the end of your line. It would be nice if they had an automatic refresh or something, but.
[Alicia Hunt]: Like to put it on auto, I'll mention that to them, that they could have an option for auto perch, like automatically charge my credit card every, you know, 20 weeks and send a new bag. It's not a bad idea, honestly.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I think that's what they were doing when the city was not involved, when it was completely private. They would leave a bag with each pickup.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That was really clear.
[Alicia Hunt]: You weren't charged extra for that. And the difficulty is that it was... So there were actually two things going on. Because they were leaving one bag every week, that actually really slowed the drivers down because they had to get out and put... They had to like get it off their roll and rip it and put it there. And that really adds up when you're doing for thousands. And so that was, they didn't want to leave one a week that way. And then the city was picking up that additional cost. And when you spread that out over the 18,000 households we hope to have included, it adds up. So that's why we're not doing it that way anymore.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I think it's reasonable that we have that responsibility. It's just, it is a problem when you get to the end of the week and you don't have a bag for the next week. You're like, ah.
[Alicia Hunt]: So you can use paper bags. And what they recommend is that if you do that, you kind of double up, like that you put two bags in and then you put it inside that's a little thicker.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: They tend to fall apart.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, or you can put a put a paper bag in and then so they take it and they dump it into their truck so it's not really a problem for them. If it falls apart, it just is more gross in the bottom of your ban. So. Yeah. Uh. All right, shall I move on? So the EV charging revolving fund that passed the city council the first reading, the process isn't, then they have to advertise it and then they have to vote again, but we don't see any issues and that will really help out our office budget. The school's HVAC is that we're working through the schematic design from the Andrews and the McGlynn site assessment The schematic design for the Andrews, the site assessment at the Megalyn, as well as we're working on fixes in the lower school. So that project is moving. This is a traditional city project and that is so big and complicated that it is slow. But I saw schematic designs presented last week, so it's moving along. Fire station. So when we had an energy meeting with the Consultants for the fire station, they think it's possible that we could hit net zero. So they are the designers on the new Cambridge fire station, which is net zero, but they said it's an extremely tight site and it's It's made it very expensive for them to go net zero, but they think it would actually be much easier for our building. And so what we'll definitely have solar panels on top. But what we're looking at is doing a partial geothermal where we do wells that handle some of the load, but not the whole load for the building. And that's a balance of like cost effectiveness and the amount of space we have and the time. And so they're just doing the engineering on that right now. to determine if that's what makes the most sense. It's lovely working at this point on a building where there was no debate over whether or not it could be all electric, and they just wanted me to say that it was okay that their emergency generator be natural gas. I don't know for those of you who may remember the details with Hurricane Sandy, but at that point, they had natural gas, but they couldn't get diesel deliveries. A lot of the emergency generators went dry because there was a requirement for them to be diesel. So I actually from that whole like resiliency, this is an emergency building, like that the emergency generator would be natural gas. So that's coming, and it's fun. Some of you may not know, the architects on the library, when we told them that it was gonna be, we wanted a net zero building, were like stunned. They had never designed a net zero building before, and they didn't know that they could. And Luke helped them. And I'm gonna tell you that I presented last night with that architect at our library to donors. And she mentioned that she has now gotten And Luke, I wasn't really familiar with what she was saying, but she's being recognized as a library designer. Yeah.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Do you understand it? Yeah. She's getting the F.A.I.A., which is a distinguished award in the American Institute of Architects. It's basically she is the I'm forgetting. She's a fellow. So, and being a fellow, you have to have accomplished certain things in the industry and it's a prestigious award. So, and she is specifically a fellow because of her work with libraries.
[Alicia Hunt]: And with Medford's library. Medford's library was a huge. Yeah, huge part of her application. And she's presented at a library conference about designing net zero libraries now. So, you know, we can't change the industry.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I would just add about the library that whoever's in charge, as the people there are extraordinarily nice, particularly in the children's section, but everywhere. They go out of their way to be helpful and friendly and accessible. And I complain when I'm not happy, and this is, it's really, it's always a pleasure to go there. And I go with my grandson fairly frequently, and they're just as nice as could be to everybody. It's great.
[Alicia Hunt]: And, you know, stuff like that really comes from top down and well, we might say from the mayor, but from the library director. So we're at this fancy formal presentation for the big donors and stuff about the green aspects of the library. And Barbara is saying, I still want my penguin habitat. Can't we have a penguin habitat? And the architect said, yes. Barbara wanted penguins to slide through slides through the library. Unfortunately, we could not do that for her. When that is the heart of your library director, you just have people who love their work.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: It shows. It's great.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. So yeah, so the fire station, it's looking.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Can we get penguins at the fire station?
[Alicia Hunt]: No, maybe that would work. We'll see if we can get firemen at the fire station, that would be lovely. So, yes, so that is coming along. And then the Climate Equity Council. So as you all know, the Climate Equity Council is made up of the Medford Connectors, and they are putting on three Hispanic Heritage Month events, as well as the Winter Preparedness event, and that Brenda has been doing an abbreviated Electrify Medford training for them as well, so they can also help with some of the outreach. But now there are more hands up. Should we go back to Kathleen?
[Kathleen McKenna]: I'm just curious, when is the fire station forecast to be complete? A couple of years or?
[Alicia Hunt]: Couple of years for the life of me I don't remember, but it's a couple of years right now. It's well the design so we finished the, so it took a while to get the like the layout and the, the schematic on where on how on the property there are a lot of issues with it's a very tight site, and they wanted a lot of parking. But we're now moving into the work with the engineers and stuff to get the details. And there's this override vote to help pay for the bond for it. And if that doesn't pass, I don't know what that means for this project, because it's a $30 million building.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: Barry?
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, without getting into the messy politics of the fire station. Just as a factual yes, no question is the management of the fire department behind the new design.
[Alicia Hunt]: The fire chief is at every single meeting that we have on this. And he whichever fire chief we've had over the years has been a single meeting for this. Like if he can't come, we don't hold the meeting. So And there have been changes made that he has asked for. And he overrode some of the things that we thought it would be a better design to not have a big, wide apron in front of it, but to have the trucks come straight out onto the road. And he overrode that. And so he changed the whole orientation of the building. So they're listening to him. He and the union are not necessarily the same thing.
[Barry Ingber]: Yes, I know. That's that's what. Yeah, but he is at the union, as opposed. I'm asking if the manager is.
[Alicia Hunt]: He is at every single meeting and they're not moving forward unless he's comfortable with stuff.
[Barry Ingber]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. And I'm at most meetings. So which is why I can say that so definitively. Luke.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I would just ask, along the lines of the discussion at the library yesterday, are there some grants available for net zero fire stations to help kind of offset the load that Medford will need to take on for the costs?
[Alicia Hunt]: It's much harder with fire stations because we don't have the equivalent of the Massachusetts library building. MLBC, whatever that organization, we don't have it for fire stations. So we are working with National Grid on building level scale incentives. And there is direct pay, which is I think people are aware of this from the federal government. If you as a homeowner do a renewable energy project, you get a 30% tax credit. Nonprofits and government get that. So it's called direct pay. And so we can get the 30% that when we were doing the library and all, that money was just lost. We could not access that. So that's not the whole building. That is just the parts that have to do with the renewable energy. But that is very much on our radar. And it was funny because the architects were like, well, we don't know if we can really count on this money, really love to see what happens with the government and how it all works. And Brenda and I were like, actually, no, it's a formula. And as long as you meet the codes of the formula, you can do it. And we are becoming quite well versed in that. And I will just for your reference, Brenda is coming quite well versed in that, and she briefs me with what I need to know. But there have been a lot of webinars in education for municipal staff on how to take advantage of that direct pay. And it is guaranteed as long as you jump through the right hoops in the right order. So that is one of the things that she has her eye on.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, that is great.
[Alicia Hunt]: Just like, by the way, in Massachusetts, the heat pumps, you got to jump through the right hoops and in the right order. And so it's really important that if people are thinking about getting heat pumps, that they are paying a lot of attention to that. because you can install the right kind of heat pumps and not get an energy assessment beforehand and don't qualify for the 10 grand. And you can do the energy assessment and work with an improved installer and install heat pumps. And it turns out they're one of the models that doesn't qualify. So you've got to be really careful about that. I've heard both stories in Medford in the past year and 18 months.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I would say that the onus should be less on the consumer. Then. The. Seller of the service and. It should be made. Completely clear. How to get that? Advantage. And like like I say, you know you. It can't be like you go to the store and you know, choosing this product over that product. No. This is big money for for middle income people. So, so that needs to be completely clear. Unfortunately, whatever, whatever way we can get that, get that out.
[Alicia Hunt]: Unfortunately, not all companies are as above board as you would like. And some companies, so when we got our quotes for my house, we got three quotes and the company that just seemed the most professional and I was really the most comfortable with, and I said to my husband, I like them, I'd like to do business with them, I think this would go smoothly. When they sent us their proposal, it was dramatically higher than the other two. Then we sent all three of them to the consultant, Abode, that is contracted at this point through Electrify Medford, to review the quotes. The company that I thought was so amazing and professional, Abode said to us, there's not enough detail here for us to really understand what they want to install, and we don't know whether or not these would qualify for the rebates. And we're not comfortable with, we're not certain which model, if they're even proposing the right model for New England. And I just found that to be really interesting because they really came across as a company I'd like to do business with. And then I saw somewhere within a few blocks of here, four of their trucks at one house one day. And I'm like, oh, somebody is getting heat pumps in. I hope they're installing the right stuff. So.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I'm glad that the consultants are around because I went through thinking about heat pumps a couple of years ago, had three different proposals, all of them gave me different information. And when I talked to Luke, he gave me information that was different for all three of them. And so I just threw my hands and walked away and haven't gone back yet.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, well, now's a good time to do it when we have people who can help. And I think it really helps to run it through with a boat. Now, don't quote me on this, but I think it's free for everybody now, because it was going to be free, covered by our grant for some populations, and then other people would have to pay. But I think I heard that it's now free for everybody because Mass Save is covering it. But I'm not 100% on that. Thank you. But it was like 70 or 80 bucks. It was the best 80 bucks I ever spent.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm sorry, why did you spend that money?
[Alicia Hunt]: To have them look at the proposals that I was given and tell me how do they compare? What do they really need? Which ones were going to be more energy efficient? Were they all good proposals for my house? And would they all qualify for the Mass Saver eBay?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So this is the third party that you sent information to in order to choose which one's okay for your house to negotiate a contract with. That to me is problematic, but That's just me.
[Alicia Hunt]: They're an independent third party that's been evaluating these. And what they told me was that there was not enough information from one of them. And what they can tell you is which equipment they're recommending and the pros and cons of like, this is going to be more expensive to run. This is going to heat recovery faster. Your house will get warmer faster, but it'll be more expensive. Like they could tell us about the various what it actually meant. Because those companies, they're all in it to make a profit. So.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Well, so is this company that you, you paid the 80 bucks to, and I, I did, you know, I, I'm not, I'm not like going against this or anything like that. It's just that the, the information should be made clearly available to consumers, which company is selling the product, it shouldn't be like, well, you have to choose. And then I don't know how to choose. Because most consumers aren't as judicious and intelligent as you, Alicia. And it is important for people to know that, you know, to know that there is a, you know, equality across this thing, you know, so I, I just wanted to point that out.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. Then in order to fix that, you have to make the you have to institute more regulations. And you have to get things passed more laws and get more regulations in place. And so the end result of that would be more regulations.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, if I may add to that, Paul, I agree with you. And yet, in this particular culture and economy, the competitive marketplace and the open legal approach basically says, I can sell you you know, a piece of junk that I made in my backyard and tell you it's the greatest thing ever and if you buy it, that's too bad for you. And while Medford can And so I think it's important to be as clear as possible and groups like mass save can be as clear as possible, but as possible about these are the pieces of equipment that qualify. And and I mean, a contract that you sign should include very clear language about what you are getting. And yet there are plenty of contracts that are pretty bogus. So unfortunately, The onus is on the consumer, and it is only through groups like ABODE that are contracted by the city or by National Grid or other large kind of How shall I say? I mean, it's not that National Grid and the utilities are our saviors in this, but they are responsible fiduciaries, as they are called. They do need to respond to their clientele. And so companies like Abode and some of the other energy auditors out there are paid to provide citizens with somewhat unbiased, not quite unbiased, but semi-unbiased evaluation and information.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: It was my experience when we did try to do this a couple of years ago. In addition to all that, there was just, it seemed to me, ignorance around clarity on a variety of issues, like what did or didn't qualify for the $10,000. Did you or didn't you have to get rid of your old furnace? Were or weren't heat pumps effective below whatever lower degree temperature in the winter? And I thought some of it was just the people that were coming out to talk to me, didn't know what they were talking about, since they all had different things to say. And then when I talked to Luke, who I regard as really knowing what he was talking about, he had something different to say than the three people that I spoke to. Hopefully, that's improved and there's more clarity about it. But having an unbiased, presumably knowledgeable entity providing advice, I think is a good idea with all the reservations, of course, appropriately expressed. That's my view.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I hate to overstep and jump in on a good conversation. I do wanna acknowledge we're going very, we're straying away from our agenda time slots a little bit and I wanna be mindful of time. So unless Alicia has any more really pressing updates, I'd love to jump towards our next section or two just to make sure we can move this along and end at a reasonable hour.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that was it. Those were the end of the updates Brenda left me.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Fantastic. All right. Bob, you had been, I believe, tapped to talk a little bit about waste reduction. I don't know if you feel strongly enough to speak on it now or if you'd like to postpone it to the next session. We've run clean through your time slot.
[Robert Paine]: The only thing I can mention is I just sent out an email and I don't know if it's bounced back to some people. I looked up some examples of what things can people do to reduce waste and I got website that says there's 21 things you can do. So I sent that out to people just as an initial step, and maybe I'll have more to say next month. So you can take that as an initial appetizer for the main event. So I'll leave it at that.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I very much appreciate it. We'll keep checking our inboxes for that, and I'll let you know if it bounces. Great. Which brings us to our final piece of business. Paul has prepared a presentation on PFAS, a very important topic near and dear to my heart. Paul, are you prepared to speak on that? Oh, you are muted.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yes, can you hear me? Can people hear me? Yes. Okay, I'll share my screen unless the presentation is in your hands, which you can share. But I'd rather do that than have you share it.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I have nothing, but I can deputize you to share.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think I can at least.
[Alicia Hunt]: Everybody's co-host should be able to share screen.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, Paul, you should be okay to go for it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Can folks see this? Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, maybe you could make it so that it occupies the whole screen, but I don't know. Oh, that's good. Yeah.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Is that good?
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Right. So I wanted to share this. because I keep abreast of it quite a bit, and I'm interested in it. So it affects stuff that I do at work and other people, obviously. So I wanted to make sure that people had some information about it. So it was I'll go through with this now. All right, so let me just minimize stuff because I... Okay, there we go. Okay, so things that contain PFAS, right? So let me just... I'm sorry, I need to minimize stuff. Okay. Almost everything you see contains PFAS. And they're almost in everything you touch, you consume, and they are just ubiquitous, absolutely everywhere. So if you ask the question, Where can I find some PFAS? Well, almost everything you look at. Your clothes, your desk, your utensils, well, not utensils, but cotton pads, even dental floss and nail polish. Definitely cleaning products. Paints and sealants and varnishes. in eye makeup and all kinds of cosmetics that are there. So it's important to understand that. So why do we love polyfluorinated alkyls? They are very good at being hydrophobic and lipophilic. They're resistant to water and oil, and they make excellent water and oil repellents. That's why you have them in pots and pans when you cook stuff. They have a low surface tension, which means they spread very easily in thin films across a surface you're actually spraying them on. and this prophecy of valuable for firefighting foams and whatnot. They're not as often used in firefighting foams as they were before, but I think in many places they still are. They have chemical stability, so they are chemically resistant to heat, chemical degradation, biological breakdown, They contribute, and this durability comes from the carbon fluorine bond that they have. And so it makes some useful industrial coatings, electronics, and various other things, including automotive components. They're good as electrical insulation. They have many uses in electrical applications, materials, insulating materials for wires and cables and semiconductor manufacturing. They're usually used in chip manufacture. So when you see chip manufacturing or chips stacked, you can think how much PFAS is used in those industrial applications. They are resistant to biological degradation, so these are novel compounds, fluorine compounds, and they are not, evolution has not reached a point where it can actually break these things down yet. People are working on it to accelerate evolution to break these things down, but we'll see. They're used obviously in sewage treatment, systems and certainly medical devices because of their properties. But the resistance to biological degradation makes them appealing in those applications. They've got high thermal stability. They are just really resistant to being broken down. That's why they're used as coating on your pots and pans. So there you go. Right, so why we love PFAS, they make everything associated with modern life better. So that tells you something about modern life. So I'm going to give you just an example of how PFAS are used in cosmetics. And they are absolutely inserted into cosmetic formulation like no other. So they are added to cosmetics for a number of reasons, including water resistance. You don't want your mascara to run off anymore like in old movies when, you know, it rained and your mascara run off. Film formulation, they form a nice film. which increases the durability and spreadability. They're very good at forming films on things. They preserve color. So color ingredients in cosmetics make them very useful for using in lipstick and eye shadow. Skin, believe it or not, skin conditioning. PFAS can condition stuff that goes on your skin and it makes your skin appear shiny. Remarkably, that's allowed to be used. And obviously, they improve product consistency, which is really important for manufacturing of almost anything. So there you have it. And here I'm just giving you the amazing number of PFAS that are used in cosmetics. So this is just a list. I'm not going to go through it, but just to know there's 18 of them over here and up to 35 from there that are actually used in cosmetics, believe it or not. So this is This just exemplifies how much, how useful they are in almost everything we use dealing with modern noise. Right, so this slide is titled Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. And the only reason I put that there, and that's the title of the film, it was just that it exemplified exactly how these things are used, and you find them in almost everywhere you go. And it has to do with the way we live. So they're used in textiles and leather to provide waterproofing. They're obviously used in waterproofing sprays. They're used in food packaging, including what's actually compostable, such as coffee cups and disposable dishes and pizza boxes. In fact, recent research has shown that pizza boxes are just incredibly impregnated with these things. And of course, recycling of impregnated paper can lead to PFAS contamination of downstream things. So they're used in fire extinguishing films because their surface active properties are very good at smothering things. They're used, believe it or not, in ski wax. Like the wax is not enough. You need to give it a little bit more oomph with the PFAS in there. They're used in industrial applications like chromium electroplating that generally causes some sort of toxic aerosol. Chromium electroplating is used in a myriad of things. You have anything that's chromium-plated, you probably have PFAS used in that application. Obviously, they're used in pots and pans because they're non-stick. They're heat-resistant. That makes them excellent things to use in that application. They're used in liquids and greases that are used in electronic industry as lubricants. And the cosmetics use involves things like sun protection and skin and hair products, which make these products water repellent. And Building products, such as floor coverings, cables, coated woods, solar panels and glasses. You can see the applications there, all towards water repellents. Oil and gas industry use them quite frequently. In fact, the fracking fluid used to contain large amounts of PFAS. And these were, as you know, this is injected deep underground into sedimentary rock to release gases that are used.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Paul, is there a category or group of products that they replace?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Where?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: In any of these. in any of these situations? Are there other substitutes?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: These are applications that are made de novo. So they are, you know, people think, well, that would be good to use that there. And sure enough, they have an application there. Does that make sense?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I'm what I'm trying to understand is if, if they were eliminated, would there be other safer products that would take their place?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: That's being worked on right now. There is a there is a contingent of people that are saying, well, you know, we don't need to use this stuff to do that. But I, I'll be honest with you on a chemist. So something that comes along the way and says, hey, this makes this reaction works better. I'll use it. And obviously, I'm not of that mind frame anymore. But, but, but many chemists are still stuck in that mind frame. If you know what I mean? Does that? Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. So they're used in ionic liquids, particularly things that are found in lithium batteries. We have a lot of lithium batteries, right? So this is an application that they're used in. Certain pesticides contain PFAS as co-formulants because they increase the spreadability of pesticides on plants. And obviously, they kill more bugs, but once the plants die, they find their way into the soil. So there you have another way of being exposed to them. that actually themselves are actually used as pesticides, and roughly about 45 pesticide-active ingredients approved by the European Union contain trifluoromethyl, though trifluoromethyl is used in a myriad of chemical products, including lots of drugs, because fluorine provides an electron withdrawing property that is very useful in making particular things work. So then, roughly about 30% of newly approved active pharmaceutical ingredients are organofluorine compounds. So, some fellow identified 342 fluorinated active pharmaceutical substances. I can testify to this because I am involved in making drugs. So, I'm there. All right, so, I don't know what this thing is. Anyway, just to say that they, in spite of all the stuff that's going on about concerns about PFAS and whatnot, we are still getting patents, and in the thousands. And I did this little search on Google patents to look at, you can see the data. I don't know if you see my arrow there. It's pointing to 2015 to 2024. So roughly about nine, 10 years. And there's still tons of patents going in for things that resonate with perfluoro and synthesis of. So that's what I entered. And I got about roughly about 20,000 entries here. And on the side here, these are the main companies that are introducing new PFAS into applications and whatnot. So you can see how popular this stuff is. and it's not going away. So if there is any mitigation to be done, this process needs to be regulated in a serious way. What do these look like? Well, they look like what you see right there. I am sure people don't come across chemical compounds a lot, but what you see as nodes there and nothing in the middle there, those are those are carbon molecules, sorry, carbon atoms. And obviously you can see fluorine there. And this is just a, I just wanted to give you a sort of a pictorial depiction of how chemists might imagine perfluorinated compounds. So that's just there for just for fun. I don't know if anyone's having fun here, but anyways. Anyway, so environmental stuff. So I just, there's here, I wanted to point out the three conceptual models for how PFAS gets into the environment. And This is from EnviroVicky. I just copied and pasted over here. And I'm going to concentrate on only one of them. And that's the conceptual site model for landfills and wastewater treatment plants. And all I want to say about this is that you can see how the stuff gets into the groundwater. I mean, this is really a nice depiction of how what we use on the surface gets into the bottom of stuff and then essentially pervades almost everything. And there is on the right side in the little depression you see, there's a typical marker for invertebrates. They end up being affected by this quite a bit. This just shows that they are very dispersible, very ubiquitous. They get into almost everything because of their properties. And this is the reason why I just wanted to put this slide up. So that's all I have to say about that. So human effects on humans and effects on animals and why we should hate PFAS. Of course, I had a slide before saying why we love PFAS, but now we should concentrate on why we should hate them. So, all right, so they affect the immune system. They suppress the immune system. There's corroborating evidence to say that, to show that. They affect the thyroid. Particularly, they alter thyroid hormones and potentially contribute to thyroid disease. They affect reproductive health, both in men and women. in terms of outcomes on pregnancy, delayed puberty, sperm count, fetal development, all manner of things. So you can see how these are affecting seriously the health and welfare of people. Cancer, there's been some correlation between specific cancers and PFAS, including kidney and testicular cancer. Developmental effects, lower birth weight, potential impacts on neurodevelopment in children. There is even some evidence showing that they affect addiction or they enhance addiction. to substances. They clearly have an effect on semen quality and motility. For many years, we have wondered why the semen quality and quantity and whatnot have gone down in human populations. And this might actually be the culprit. So there is evidence supporting this now. Neurodevelopment effects, you know, they have potential impact on neurodevelopment in particularly if the higher levels and in blood cord or blood towards adverse effects on cognitive development and behavior in children. Other health effects. liver damage, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, diabetes, and lots of other stuff, nasty stuff. So this is just in humans. This is what's going on in animals. And what I want to point out and what I'm really concerned about, this is a canary in a coal mine kind of thing, is the effect on amphibians. things like geckos, frogs, and whatnot. Their numbers have been declining in the United States, and this might actually represent a causal effect, a causal, what do you call it, causal effect, I guess, yeah, on why these populations are declining and going down. There's obviously other things that are here that I've put up, but I'm not going to get into it for sake of time. And that's no reflection on the importance of the animal. Of the other species on this planet, because I value them just as much as I value my son. Anyway. So how can we mitigate all this stuff? Regulation policy is important. We have to restrict use of PFAS and limit environmental contamination. We have to put money into monitoring and research. We can't just, you know, ignore it. It's affecting everything. It's affecting our healthcare. It's affecting our bottom line. So this is absolutely important. Remediation and cleanup, obviously, this is an important thing. So if we can find places where they've been produced and that's usually where they are usually dumped, where they're produced, they're usually dumped. We have to make a map of that and people are much, people who are much more erudite and much better at this than I am I've made maps and you can check that out. We have to find out alternatives. This is an issue for modern existence, modern life. So you want everything to be convenient and whatnot. We have to think about what it means for something to be convenient. public awareness and education. This is what we're doing right here at MEEC, which is a forum for educating the public in medicine. And you need to put in place food safety measures. It again goes back to regulation. How much, what are the actual toxicological limits of these things and how they impact health, in what concentrations. These have to be implemented by government and government should listen to people. So how can I mitigate PFAS? I'm not putting this responsibility on the consumer because I am not the kind of person that thinks that things are just put out there for and we're all... and whatnot. So there we are. There's water filtering that you should think about if you're concerned about it. Although I have not seen data on Medford water contamination with PFAS, so that's ongoing, I think. And by 2025, we should know more. It is not, it would not be a surprise to me that we find a ton of it in the drinking water be, or actually consume. But filters aren't as effective as people think. There's a saturation limit with PFAS which exceeds what you normally try to get out of carbon filters and whatnot. And it costs money. Lots of people, middle-income people, don't have the money to install filters. They rely on taxes to get clean water out of the tap. That's a given. don't use nonstick cookware because I'll give you a point on this. You take you take a stainless steel pan, heat it up, make sure the water drop a few drops of water on it. And if it beads, it's it's hot enough and nothing will stick to it. So just oil after that. And that that'll help you out. Hopefully it'll help. All right. So then obviously check care products. Be mindful of what cosmetics you use, and whether the things are like advertised as waterproof. Usually that means they've used it on it, so. Read product labels. Those are not implemented at all thoroughly, so we don't know what goes into product labels, so particularly packaging. So you see a protein bar. It's delicious, healthy. but it might be contaminated PFAS because of the packaging. And then properly dispose of containing PFAS-containing items. I put this up because, yes, there should be something that says or some sort of method to dispose of this stuff. if we are of a mind to do it in a very serious way. I don't see this happening too seriously. So I'm seeing a lot of people throw the cookware into the rubbish bin and it goes into the municipal waste and ends up in the waste water. Avoid contaminated sites. That's that's that's a given because you need you. I would generally not recommend anyone building a property or a house near a fracking site, so please don't do that. Alright, so. These are some ways people are trying to mitigate PFAS hello. These are some ways people are trying to mitigate PFAS they. there's froth flotation. And this is just to give some, some glimmer of hope to this whole nonsense that's going on. And I want to, there are very, very are bright people looking at this problem in a very serious way. So there's froth flotation, which means you bubble stuff through sludge. And remarkably, that causes the PFAS to come to the surface and you can collect it and then treat it some way. There is photocatalysis. You essentially use sort of a screen-through kind of method to use, it's usually UV light. It's as you can see that in the pictorial on top, light irradiation. So that certain substances like titanium oxide can be used to break down PFAS. There is reductive fluorination. This is another catalytic method to get rid of PFAS. So, and then the last thing I wanted to point out is mixed matrix membranes. This is sort of a filtration method to get through the PFAS. So, I put this up only to show that there are people seriously thinking about this getting rid of stuff, because it is a serious problem, and we need to really think about it deeply, carefully, methodically. And so, this should give us a glimmer of hope on are folks thinking this. And one of these obviously is going to emerge as, or some of these, so there's others. I haven't, this is by no means an exhaustive depiction of what's going on. So I'm just putting this up like that. So one of these should emerge as, or two or three might emerge as the optimal method of treating things in terms of cost and effectiveness. And lastly, I wanted to just give you some references that I've used to formulate this presentation. Some of these, particularly the last ones, are very, very helpful for a lay person to go through there is some obviously these are reviews and these are done by scientists so there is some um i did it some you know it's it's boring uh to some folks uh so if you want a but but but for those who are very interested and deeply concerned um they should be looking at some of these um um references. And lastly, I just wanted to thank you for your attention. I appreciate it so much. Thank you.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Are you taking questions? I don't know if we have too, too much time, but if people have things on their minds. All right, looks like we're in the final few of us. Last bit on the agenda is if we have any new business we'd like to discuss, anything we'd like to throw into the record before we adjourn.
[Robert Paine]: Well, this is Bob Payne. With all the hurricane destruction due to floodwaters, I was gonna raise the issue again about Medford's vulnerability to excessive rain or coastal flooding. There's two different threats, I guess. One is overtopping the Amelia Era Dam, but I guess there might be a project to raise the level by four feet. that would help, but then the other issue is, say we get 12 inches of rain in six hours, what's gonna happen to Medford? So that's, I guess I'd like to revisit that to see if Brenda knows anything about any recent studies about how vulnerable we are and what is our, do we have any plans to mitigate such threats? I'll leave it at that.
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: make sure we make time on the agenda for it, and I'll relay that to her. And Kathleen?
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yeah, Paul, I was wondering if you could send your presentation out? Is that an issue? And my other question was, how long have these PFAS, you know, chemicals been used in products? Is it recent or is it like something introduced in the 60s and 70s or earlier? 40 years. 40 years, okay.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, longer perhaps, but that's my perception of the data that's out there. So they've been used quite frequently. So they're used, like I said, they're used in a myriad of things, almost everything that you can think of in terms of, in terms of greasing modern life.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I think it's a good use of that term. Yeah.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: They're very useful things. It's just that we, We don't know what we do with stuff when we make it. That's the problem. We think we're doing good, but we really don't. And if we can get away with it, We'll sell it.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: So yeah, I think as with many things, right. It may have started as a small application, but now lots of people are making different versions. As you saw, there are like thousands of variations and they're super useful and you can find a million products to sell it in. Yeah.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, that's where we're at. And just to be clear, PFAS is the tip of the iceberg. There's about 70,000 or 80,000 chemicals that we have no regulation on at all. And we use them in products, all sorts of products. And I think the last presentation I made was on... I forget what they were on. Anyways, I made some presentation before, but that was something awful too.
[Robert Paine]: Was it? Yeah, how hard it was? No idea.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah. Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, Paul, don't go too far down the doomsday feelings, at least. No, no. I do have to say that, as you were saying, while those things do grease the life and make things seem better, Um, to Benji's question earlier, we can still do things the old fashioned way. You know, there are the old school solutions still available.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: We used to preserve food without all this stuff. So, you know, that should give us hope.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Right. Well, I need to head out and eat dinner, but thank you very much. That was great.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Thank you, Paul.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I would also love a copy of that if available.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure. I did send it to Teresa and I sent all the accompanying documentation too. So it should be available. This is something that maybe we should discuss at a later point. I'm not going to bring it up right now, but like in a big way, but in terms of references and things that people can access freely, perhaps we should have some place to put them on the MEEC site.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you. That sounds good. All right. Have a good night.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Can I make a motion to adjourn?
[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Please. I'll second that. Fantastic. Any objections? Have a wonderful evening. Thank you so much. I will see you all next month, November 13th.